


poison and wine

by meritmut



Series: i loved you well, when we were young [10]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Loki being emo, Navel-Gazing, What's new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:07:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is love?</p><p>(Don't hurt me.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	poison and wine

Her hair flickers through his fingers, twisting and slipping over knuckle and tip as Loki reacquaints himself with the most inadvertent gift he had ever given her. Curled at his side like a dozing lioness, her head pillowed on his lap, Sif sighs and stirs slightly, drifting halfway between the waking world and the one beyond it – the one in which Loki could, if he chose, find her again. But she’s with him now in the real one: he can feel the red heat of her coiled beside him, the pulse of scarlet blood in her temple against his leg. He need not follow her to find her, when she presses so close and the warmth of her is as a brazier to his chilly bones.

Absently Loki twines a lock of that dark fire about his middle finger, and watches it uncurl and recoil into place as he relinquishes it. He wonders where, in her dreams, Sif wanders - and knows that whither she goes, thither he would follow without hesitation. The thought of that worries him a little, but he lingers not on such an ancient anxiety. He long ago came to terms with the fact that Sif is as much the core of him as his own beating heart, and if there is any soul in all the nine realms and beyond to which he must be so beholden, at least it’s one who would never rub it in. Sif doesn’t tend to proclaim her victories to the heaving skies – no, that’s Thor’s domain. She keeps them close, tucks them away inside and lets them warm her with their quiet strength, and while Loki might wish her to understand him less keenly, to know only what he wants her to and even sometimes for her to remain at arm’s length, there are some things can’t be fought. Sif has power over him. She has power over everything she touches. Her eyes are twin supernovae, blackened and ferocious or glimmering greenly in the light as they sear through him, _into_ him, seeing all. Her mouth is a sweet hemlock, a gradual and delicious little death that he would revisit morning and night until the poison that slows his heart and enthrals his mind is turned instead to wine, removed of its latent bitterness even as Loki would remove himself from her fatal influence.

He wouldn’t, though. He would never. To lose Sif would be to lose the moon, and all the tidal stirrings of the blood she inspires. To lose Sif would be to lose the only other person who knows what it is to find herself without a place, and to carve it out of dream and ambition with her very fingernails. She did so with more success than he.

Almost without realising, he traces the curve of her arm, sliding over scar-pitted skin with feather-light fingertips. How many times has he laid his hands upon her this way? Healed scrapes, kissed away bruises, let faint scars remain for Sif to wear like medals? He’d never taken an interest in the healing aspect of his seiðr, not until he had scrambled to use it in defence of Sif’s life.

It’s not that he loves her. It’s certainly not that she loves him. But the poison is in his veins now and Sif’s light is a thing he will not risk, any more than he would risk his brother's.

She wakes with the first lark’s song as ever, turns glowing tawny eyes upon him. Surprised to see him awake, and even more so to realise that he’d never slept. She shifts onto her back, reaches up to trace the line of his jaw and pull him down for a kiss. The soporific sweetness sinks its hooks into him once more, and Loki reminds himself forcefully that he does not _love_ Sif.

He does, though – of course he loves her. He has always loved her in his own way and he always will. But he doesn’t…he can’t, won’t, doesn’t want to, _love_ her, not that way. Not the way that dooms the young and sends the old to their graves together.

The way that kindles the blood to war and stirs the soul to song – maybe that way. Maybe. He wouldn’t feel any other way for Sif, and he knows she’d scorn him if he tried.

She is a thing he will not risk, after all, any more than he would risk his brother.

But they - and more - are risked and lost, the day she turns her back on Asgard’s king.


End file.
